Sunday, November 14, 2010

Aaron Huey on the Oppression of the Lakota Indians

As Thanksgiving approaches, consider this:

5 comments:

mateicho1 said...

Interesting stuff. He's right though, about the genocide. And because it's our nation's own genocide, there are a lot of good Americans who feel really uncomfortable when people try to bring up this topic-- we can't shrug it off by saying, oh, Americans could never be like those crazy Serbs, Nazis, Hutus, and their blatant disregard for human life. America's not squeaky clean by any standard.

Jon said...

You're totally right about this being an uncomfortable topic for many Americans. It's just not something many people wanna think about, which I understand, but don't support.

It seems to me that owning up to mistakes is (part of) how we let those errors inform and improve our actions in the present. Ignoring past mistakes only stunts our growth (as individuals and as a community/nation/world).

I like to think that some form of restitution can be made, and that festering issues like this really can be resolved. It may take a while, but I think it can happen.

mateicho1 said...

Yeah... a restitution that is more than just throwing money at the problem, which just pays for the alcohol. I'm in no situation to offer any better ideas right now though. It'll take a lot of thought and communication.

Kylie McQ said...

I will have to play Andie's cd for you. I thought of you while listening to this song that goes like this:

On the first Thanksgiving
The pilgrims and Native Americans
Shared with each other
The few things they had
The Native Americans brought corns, and beans, and squash
Then we have the pilgrims
Who brought the Native Americas
They brought them
Diseases.

Poetry.

Jon said...

B is for Bad Poetry. In this case, very bad. But not as bad as disease, perhaps. Colonialism is a drag.

Matt, I don't feel like I know enough about the issue either, but I'd like to know. For starters, I'm really gonna try getting to the books in my collection by and about Native Americans that I haven't read. It's not much, but at the moment, it's what I can do.

Thanks for the comments.